Kingston University: Research Seminar series

Since 2015 I have convened several series of public events and research seminars at Kingston University London. These include Baltic Connections: Cultures and Societies in a Globalising World (2015-2016), the Criminology and Sociology Department Research Seminar Series (2016-present), Brexit Futures (2016-2017) and CResCID research seminars.

—

Baltic Connections aim to provide a regular meeting place for London-based social science, arts and humanities scholars focusing on the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe from the perspective of transnational and global change.

The seminars are open and free to attend on a first come, first served basis. If you want to sign up to the series’ mailing list, of if you want any further information, please contact me at e.rindzeviciute(@)kingston.ac.uk

Dr Richard Mole is a Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of The Baltic States from the Soviet Union to the European Union: Identity, discourse and power in the post-communist transition of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Routledge, 2012). Richard’s current research examines the intersections between migration and sexuality. His paper is based on research conducted on Polish, Russian and Brazilian LGBT Migrants in London and Berlin, which seeks to explore the extent to which LGBT migrants engage with their ethno-national diasporas in a bid to gain social, economic and psychological support and, if this is lacking, whether LGBT migrants develop diasporic networks of their own.

Speaker: Agne Cepinskyte (King’s College) “Nation and State in the Weimar Republic’s and Post-Soviet Russia’s Political Discourse”.

Discussant: Dr Nevena Nancheva (Kingston).

Place: JG1010, Penrhyn Campus, Kingston University.

Time: 5-7pm, 28 April 2016.

—

Ms Agne Cepinskyte is a doctoral researcher at King’s College, London. Her dissertation project is a comparison of post-Soviet Russia’s and Weimar Germany’s policies towards their ‘nationals’ in the Baltic States: the Russian-speakers and the Baltic-Germans respectively. From the geopolitical perspective the Baltic States occupy a region that is strategically important for both the East and the West. The Baltic Germans after WWI and the Baltic Russian-speakers after the break-up of the Soviet Union faced a similar predicament, suggesting that it might be fruitful to compare Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia’s geopolitical interests in the small ‘lands in-between’.

However, despite such similarities, the interest of the two kin-states in their national minorities abroad manifested in a conspicuously different manner. The Weimar Republic quickly shifted its wartime annexationist policies towards the Baltics to pursue cooperation, resorting to the Baltic-German minority to facilitate this. By contrast, post-Soviet Russia has maintained assertive policies towards its ‘compatriots’, compromising the relations with the Baltic States. In her dissertation project Agne takes discursive approach to foreign policy to explain this discrepancy.